When all hell breaks loose: Lessons from Job

It was a beautiful day. I imagine tempretures in the low 70s. The warm summer breeze graced his face as he stood in the front of his ocean view house, basking in the glory and favor of his God. In the distance he noticed a runner – than another. One by one, messengers approached him dropping to their knees as they delivered heart breaking accounts of a beautiful and festive day gone bad.

Job stood there listening to each one of them as they unloaded tragedy after tragedy. But the account that knocked him off his feet and brought him face to the ground was the account of the last runner.

Your sons and daughters were eating and drinking wine in their oldest brother’s house, and behold, a great wind came across the wilderness and struck the four corners of the house, and it fell upon the young people, and they are dead, and I alone have escaped to tell you.

Have you ever been hit with bad news? How did you handle it? How should you handle it? I confess there is no telling what one should or should not do when tragedy hits out of the clear blue sky. Maybe Job can help us a bit.

What Job didn’t understand was high up in the presence of God the accuser and enemy of his soul had conspired to take him out. Why? God had been bragging about him for a while. “Have you seen my servant Job?”

When all hell breaks loose in your life, know that you are blessed and favored. You are doing something so good that it atrracts the praise of God and the plots of the devil.

Somebody once said,

As long as you are stationary, no one will complain. Dogs don’t bark at parked cars. But as soon as you accelerate—once you step out of drunkenness into sobriety; dishonesty into integrity; or lethargy into compassion—expect the yapping to begin.

When all hell breaks loose in your life, know that your Heavenly Father is aware and not taken by surprise.

When all hell breaks loose right out of the clear blue sky, know that your Heavenly Father has already set in motion your path to victory.

Your life may never be the same, but God will take the bad, and the ugly and turn them into something beautiful.

When all hell breaks loose:

Keep your foot on the accelerator:

Keep doing the things that got you the praise from God. As long as you are getting praise from God, it doesn’t matter what the enemy throws your way. The obedience that made you a victim at the hand of the enemy, is the same obedience that will make you a victor at the hand of your Father. Press on!

“But he knows the way that I take; when he has tried me, I shall come out as gold.”

“In all this Job did not sin or charge God with wrong.”

“There is no violence in my hands, and my prayer is pure.”

“If iniquity is in your hand, put it far away, and let not injustice dwell in your tents.”

“What is my strength, that I should wait. And what is my end, that I should be patient?”

Keep a positive confession:

This is far superior to a positive thinking or a name it and claim it rigmarole. Your positive confession is centered on your absolute trust and assurance in the goodness of God. It is a reckless abandon, complete faith and total reliance on faithfulness of God.

“The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

“I know that you can do all things and that no purpose of yours can be thwarted.”

“Though he slays me, I will hope in him.”

“I know that my Redeemer lives, and in the end, he will stand.”

“I had heard of you by the hearing of the ear, but now my eye sees you.”

Conclusion:

After all was said and done, “the Lord restored the fortunes of Job when he had prayed for his friends. And the Lord gave Job twice as much as he had before. Then came to him all his brothers and sisters and all who had known him before, and ate bread with him in his house. And they showed him sympathy and comforted him for all the evil that the Lord had brought upon him. And each of them gave him a piece of money and a ring of gold. And the Lord blessed the latter days of Job more than his beginning.”

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There are three things I think about every moment of everyday... they consume me deeply. How to: 1. Refine my theological understanding 2. sharpen my ethical rigor 3. and heighten my devotional intensity.
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Walter